Creating Official Sites

One person must be designated as "web manager" for an official site. That person has ownership of the directory and files but may share access privileges with any number of web developers by creating a UNIX group. To request server space, please select one of the an official site types and follow its directions.

These sites must be "owned" by an employee of the department or center. Even if a student is going to be the primary web developer, it is more efficient to have a permanent owner who can administer the site. The permanent owner may create a UNIX group, then add students who need access to the website. Learn more about how to request web space.

All requests for server space for organizations—for example, student groups—must be accompanied by an email from an official representative of the sponsoring University body, indicating that the group is an officially recognized University organization. Frequently the sponsoring body is either the Activities Board at Columbia, or Earl Hall. Learn more about how a member of the sponsoring body can request web space.

Course materials are maintained in a sub-directory of www.columbia.edu/itc/. Instructors creating course sites may take advantage of the services offered by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.

To request server space, please email [email protected]. You must indicate the UNIX group for file sharing (if any; must be set up before the space is requested). In your email you need to indicate the UNI, department, and full name of the faculty member who will be the owner of the space. Also choose either the faculty member's last name or course sequence to serve as the directory name.

An official website is to be used only for live web materials related to the original purpose of the site, and should not exceed 200M in total size without prior approval of CUIT. Use the UNIX 'du' command to monitor usage. If your site does not already have a link in the Columbia domain, please send email to [email protected] as soon as your site is ready to launch. Directories not linked are considered unofficial and are subject to removal after six months.

We have experienced data losses in the past, so we advise Web managers to maintain a copy of their data on another machine in case our web crashes and we lose files.

If the individual acting as web manager for your official site changes, please request an ownership change for your directory, files and any groups your former web manager created. We will then change the ownership of the directory and groups that you indicate.

If you have created your files on your personal computer and need to move them to the Web server, please see our instructions for FTP.

In the event of network or web server failure, some official pages are mirrored by AWS CloudFront.